I worked in an office with a once a month cleaning rota. Everyone on the floor took a turn, whether you used the fridge or not. The schedule and rules were firmly established.

Except people were too afraid to follow the rules: sentient? No date? No label? No keeping.

I was ruthless in my disposal of foodstuffs, but I took the time to wash the plastic containers and left them on the counter for claiming.

The weird part? No one complained about dumped food, but the last month's designated cleaning person came into the kitchen repeatedly to "comiserate" about how ruthless he was was and how much he had tossed the last time.

Uh huh. That's why I was finding 4 month old yogurt and 2 year old, open juice boxes.

What I did get criticized for? Washing the plastic. I heard more than one person say, "No way I would have washed that. I would have tossed the whole thing." It actually felt like judgement, to be honest.

I bring non-refrigerated lunches now and leave the fridge to the amateur micro-biology enthusiasts.

The guy we just had scheduled to clean out the fridge was a bit hesitant about being ruthless, but I gave him a pep talk. I showed my Army Sergeant First Class retiree ID card, and had him show me his. I said, "This is our license to be ruthless! AAAAAAH!"

Everything except for an unopened case of diet sodas got tossed. The other fridge gets hit this Friday.

REMINDER: Refrigerators in Ground Floor Kitchen will be cleaned at 2:00 pm today!

If you have items stored in the refrigerators in the ground floor kitchen that you want to keep, please remove them before 2:00 pm today. Any items left in the refrigerators/freezers at 2:00 will be placed on the counters in the kitchen – at 3:00 pm anything still on the counters will be thrown out (including containers).

I don't know how many complaints she gets, but I don't think it could be any clearer.

It's been a week, and the fridge is still clean. Containers have initials, and the fridge no longer smells.

BUT- there is a ziploc baggie of cut veggies in there. Last week, during the purge, I chose to leave it because they looked freshly chopped, still firm. The baggie is still there, the veggies now have started to decay, look brown and slightly liquified. I want to throw it out, but it belongs to tuna co-worker. I know as soon as I toss it, she'll complain that I took her lunch.

I'm on vacation next week, and I'm willing to bet the bag will be there when I get back.

You're confident it's hers?

Take it to her. "Is this yours? I didn't want to throw out your food, but this is decaying. I'll let you toss it." Set it on her desk and walk off.

You know what I really don't understand: that people waste so much food. I never leave stuff here. I eat it or I take it home and eat it. Food costs money! Lots of money if you want organic food. And yet it continues to amaze me how many just don't seem to care. *wanders off shaking head*

A labelled yogurt is cool. But we constantly have people eating other people's yogurts because nobody labels them and people think they are grabbing their own, not remembering what flavour they brought.

Not an issue for me - I can't stand the stuff! I kept trying but I couldn't find one I liked. I've given up.

Someone once grabbed a yogurt out of our office fridge. Took one huge spoonful and then started gagging. Then, when he could talk again, he accused "somone" of planting deliberately foul-tasting yogurt in the fridge. You know, the way sometimes people suggest putting hot sauce in food to foil fridge thieves?

Only it was my yogurt, properly labeled with my initials. And it was perfectly fine. He'd just never tasted plain, unsweetened yogurt before.

At one workplace, we low-paid admin staff were continually getting our milk etc stolen by the highly-paid lawyers. That stopped after we started putting various colours of food dye in it.

At a different workplace, I had a jar of sweets on my desk. I had no problem with sharing them if people asked - that's why I had them visible - but I did have a problem when the level started mysteriously going down whenever I left my desk. So I took steps.

I would like to point out that I actually really like the sweets I filled my jar with... Atomic Fire Balls ( http://www.oldtimecandy.com/atomic-fire-balls.htm ). They are awesome! They taste like cinnamon and heat and sweet, sweet pain. And if you take all their individual little wrappers off before putting them in a jar, they look just like Jaffas ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaffas )... which the suspected culprit liked. He did NOT like hot things. Sadly I was absent with a tummy bug when my candy jar was next raided, but it never happened again!

[Insert disclaimer noting that I definitely do not condone or suggest spiking or booby-trapping foodstuffs with anything that is dangerous, an allergen, or not a normal food ingredient. Perfectly normal and safe food that a lot of people don't like, on the other hand, is fair game. I recommend nattou for severe cases of food thievery.]

Coworker and I had to work through lunch one time so we ordered a pizza delivered. It's unusual for our office but allowed. We still had half a pizza at the end of the day so we decided to leave it in the fridge and have it for leftovers the next day. Except coworker was out the next day and I forgot all about it for more than a week!

Nobody said anything but the box was fairly large. I tossed it as soon as I remembered and hopefully none of my other coworkers were too inconvenienced by the pizza box in the office fridge. (One fridge for our floor of maybe fifty - sixty people).